


Rules of Engagement

by HostisHumaniGeneris



Category: Prototype (Video Games)
Genre: Body Horror, Conspiracy, Gen, Military, Vietnam War, Villain P.O.V.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-02 11:23:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20729420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HostisHumaniGeneris/pseuds/HostisHumaniGeneris
Summary: "Hope, Idaho was just a... sacrificial lamb. A necessary cruelty. Without it, we couldn't save the world."





	Rules of Engagement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Silex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/gifts).

_She gave him a bloody grin as he wrenched himself backwards. The infant kicked in his hands, crying as he stumbled backwards, eyes wide. Someone, maybe Alvarez, stepped forward, hands up. The semicircular chunk missing from his arm throbbed as the soldier pulled the child from his hands a second before he threw it. Someone else smashed the butt of their M-16 into the woman’s head. If she noticed, she didn’t show it, sitting on the edge of the hospital bed._

_The infant continued to wail as he was carried out of the room, its voice fading, then growing louder as Alvarez re-entered the room, swearing. Gunfire echoed down the hallways. The woman made no more moves to stop them from taking the child, sitting still, staring intently at him. He almost yelled out an order to waste her anyways, his heart was racing. She had just fucking killed him. _

_He scanned the room, looking at the other people in the operating room. Most weren’t even looking at him, focused on her. A few spared quick glances. Only Jackson was staring at him, with a look that said “I told you so”._

_There orders were to liquidate the town. But, someone on the scientific team mentioned how it was something of a shame they wouldn’t get that last Hope child… how things seemed so stable until the experiment cascaded into failure, centered around a nineteen year old girl carrying some bastard child nobody could identify the father of. He didn’t have the full picture, whatever was special about her was above his paygrade, but he gleaned enough that she was special. They could drag her out. And credit would flow to him. _

_Now his arm was a burning mess and that bitch was just sitting there, looking so fucking satisfied with herself. Jackson shifted a little; he kept his gun pointed down but was bracing the but against his shoulder, clearly thinking about raising it._

_He was so fucking close. This was his ticket up. And he took his eye off that bitch for one second—had they come an hour earlier, before that thing slid out of her, just dragged her away and let her give birth under armed guard, things would be great. Now? _

_He was a dead man._

_He surveyed the room, not looking at Jackson as he asked “Sir.”_

_His eyes fell on a tray of surgical instruments. Or autopsy instruments. Scissors, knives, hooks. And a saw. He rushed for it as a rifle got raised, hearing Jackson repeat with more urgency “Sir?! Put it down.”_

_He braced his right arm on the table and brought the saw down. It bit into the skin, right where the forearm met the elbow; at least, what his best guess was. The rifle lowered, Jackson apparently having no problem if the only person that the Lieutenant used those surgical tools on was himself. A few more soldiers were joining in with questions, freaked out like **they **had anything to worry about. Somewhere distant, full auto rifle fire echoed._

_And on her face, he could see the disappointment. Yeah. She knew he beat her—she almost got him, but he fucking beat her. _

_And Peter Randall hacked away._

* * *

He stared at the ceiling, at the dozen little cracks and the flickering light. He’d stopped counting the days… a while ago. 

Shifting, he got off of the hospital bed, bare feet against grimy tile. He was pretty sure this entire hospital wasn’t supposed to be open. Over the hum of the lights he could make out the sound of something rumbling, not too far away. Generator maybe. Probably. They were probably somewhere well away from any power grid.

It was warm here.

Very warm.

He was pretty sure they weren’t in Idaho anymore. He was not conscious for the whole trip. Not in Idaho. Someplace further South probably. He made his usual circuit of the room. Door had been locked most of the time. A few days… weeks ago someone forgot to do that. He almost fell through the threshold finding the door open.

That day, he closed the door, went back to his bed, and sat. When the doctors came for their rounds, he pointed out how someone forgot to lock the door. If they wanted to maintain a quarantine, they couldn’t do shit like that. The doctor looked a little surprised, nodded, and immediately left after changing the dressing on his stump. The door clicked as it locked. 

He nodded seriously as he found it locked this time. His left hand left the knob, and he wheeled around to go around the room from the opposite direction. He shut his eyes and took a deep breath. If he was infected, they would’ve killed him already, wouldn’t they? Wouldn’t give him a bed to sleep on and three squares a day, right? Cut up for him so he didn’t have to use a knife? They would’ve gotten rid of him. Except…

They hadn’t gotten rid of everything they found on the mission. 

Maybe he deserved this. Deserved to end up like _her. _That thing in the floral print sundress in the Hospital, dress pulled to show a bloody baby boy between her legs. That was his ticket straight to the top, he assumed—the trigger pullers hadn’t been properly briefed, but both of them were important. His future was secured. Now… he didn’t think they were keeping him here for his health.

Thinking about the future was something he was trying _not _to do, because it would drive him crazy. Thinking about the past pissed him off. Thinking about _her_…

He went back to staring at the ceiling. Those cracks were safe to think about. Except the on that kind of reminded him of a vein.

No sooner had he begun to scrutinize that crack running from the corner to the light fixture, then he heard the sound of voices. He got back to his feet again and stood fast enough to make him dizzy. The door opened. The doctors were in their usual getup, lab coats and masks. Behind them was a rigid, tall man in a meticulously kept uniform. Three stars on each shoulder. He reflexively straightened, moved to salute, and stopped halfway. 

The lieutenant general nodded, thin smile forming. “At ease, son.”

This was not in the plan. He hadn’t been able to even imagine this. If they wanted to kill him, some asshole with a Colt would do the job, or a doctor with a syringe pumping poison in a vein rather than simply drawing blood... Why else would a three-star general be here? Having spent his hospitalization not expecting a future, this felt like a massive weight was lifting.

“I’ve put off a face-to face for too long. Hope you don’t mind, doctor’s orders” The general pulled something out of his pocket. Red and white pack. He pulled a cigarette out and stuck it in his mouth, lighting it with a scuffed and battered zippo. The patient said nothing until the general held the pack forward, and nodded. “You a Marlboro man, Lieutenant?”

“Anything.” He replied, voice sounding odd. It wasn’t that he hadn’t talked this entire time. He’d discussed things with the doctors before. He took an offered cigarette, and the general shoved the pack back in his pocket. He handed the zippo to the patient, who fumbled with it, having trouble lighting it with his left hand.

He managed it after a while, and took a drag. He hadn’t realized how much he missed it—then again, this past however the fuck long was disorienting and sickening and painful and numbing. Maybe he was having a nicotine fit alongside the blackouts and bad dreams. He exhaled a cloud of smoke and nodded. Handing the lighter back, he said “Thank you, sir.”

“I’ve read just about everything to do with your mission in Hope, and I must say, I’m impressed.” The general said, pocketing the lighter. Slate gray eyes bored into him. “You salvaged what you could—more than we expected to get, once things went to Hell. We sacrificed more than you know at Hope. And you yourself know what sacrifice means.”

Peter Randall nodded. “I did what had to be done.”

That razor-thin smile showed up again. Nodding, the general repeated. “Did what had to be done.”

* * *

_The houses on the outskirts of town were empty, sort of. Carpets of flies lifted up to reveal putrified skeletons in easy chairs and messes of refrigerators. But aside from the greasy stains around the bodies, they were normal homes. Well kept. Some even had recently mowed lawns, even if others were overgrown._

_Clear a house, call it in. White had the radio, panting as he adjusted the straps on the big thing, not wanting to set it down since they were moving quickly. Things were looking quiet. Right up until one of those carpets of flies shifted and stood and charged. Randall was outside, surveying the town when that happened, thinking about ways to shave time… they would hopefully reach the town center before the second platoon. Distant gunfire confirmed that they might be somewhat delayed._

_When gunfire went off much nearer, he raced in the house to see the bodies. Lang was still moving underneath the ruddy, misshapen thing, rolling, hands pressed at his throat, something dribbling out from between his fingers. They left him there—the town would burn and it wasn’t like there was anything to do for him._

_He called it in, that they made first contact, but second platoon was screaming. _

_They kept up with their end of the mission, by the time they reached town center, they couldn’t reach second platoon anymore. They had stopped entering houses and just started throwing incendiaries into them. Anything came out, that was what the rifles were for._

_Randall was deliberating whether to pull out or not when a staccato burst of rifle fire from Jackson was answered with “Fuck! Friendly, friendly!”_

_It was what was left of second platoon, all two of them. The hospital was in second platoon’s designated area, and it was apparently red hot. One of the men was fucking worthless, while the other, McGregor, offered some details. Things had been quiet, right up until there were screaming things everywhere trying to kill them all. Randall weighed his options. They could definitely just write it off, call it a day, and bug out and let the artillery deal with it._

_Or maybe there was something worth protecting in the hospital._

_They proceeded as planned, quickly but deliberately, making sure nothing was hidden as they moved towards the hospital. It was quiet, none of McGregor's things. None of the townspeople. No corpses of an entire platoon of soldiers, save for some suspiciously wet patches in the road. Just some abandoned cars, overturned garbage cans, and the Hospital. _

_A ‘Wild Weasel’ mission was the Air Force term for how you hunted surface-to-air missiles in a jungle. Just fly over where they're supposed to be, bait them into targeting a plane with their radar, and all of a sudden a hidden SAM was visible to anything with radar-seeking missiles. If they launched, then that contrail gave a handy visual indicator of where the missile was. The same principle worked more or less on the residents of Hope holding at the hospital. Rather than bumrushing to the hospital and getting overwhelmed, order three men in while the rest picked advantageous firing positions. He’d been keeping tally, losing three more men would fall within the projected casualty rate for first platoon._

_The things charged as one, and Fitzsimmons and Conner managed to outrun them. Out of derelict cars, out of the hospital doors, over a short fence. All, or most of the missing Hope residents presented an easy target. A belt from an M-60 and a couple of shots from an M-79 cleared their way into the hospital, and compared to Tunnel Rat duty in the bush, the hospital had plenty of room. Casualties on their way to the operating room were light._

* * *

It was nigh unbearable. The pause. He’d done _a lot_ during his time in the Army, plenty of things squadmates said kept them up at night. All of it was doing what Uncle Sam asked, when he asked it. He did it as expected or better than that, and he’d get asked to do more very soon. That was enough for him to sleep soundly and not think too hard, until he lost an arm and all he was asked to do was sit patiently. Then he had nothing to do but think.

“Sir?” Randall asked, waiting until the general nodded before continuing. “Regarding my condition.”

The general looked at Randall, then at one of the doctors, off to the side. The doctor had some bullshit about incubation times and symptomatology and hematology and a bunch of shit Randall didn’t quite catch. The general cleared his throat, and the man shut up. “You see, son, this was purely precautionary. You’ve got a clean bill of health.”

Cigarette held away and down, Randall took in a deep breath and held it. He could finally consider himself a survivor. He wasn’t going to end up like the poor bastards of Hope. He really _had_ beaten that bitch, that bite had cost him an arm but _nothing _more. He wasn’t going to end up like her. He opened his mouth to say something else, but the general raised a hand. 

“Let’s talk about the future.” The general said, leaning against the wall. “More specifically, your future.”

Until five minutes ago, Peter Randall was pretty sure he _didn’t_ have a future. Not that he had an easier time conceiving of it right now. Even without the fact he was not infected, he had left his right arm, his dominant hand, on the ground of a hospital in a shitty Idaho town that was nothing but a crater now. “Tell me, before Hope, what was your plan?”

What _was _his plan? Did he have one? Nobody and nothing was waiting for him coming home from Vietnam. Nothing but a few more weeks in the Jungle and his hitch would be over. Unless he reupped. “I dunno. Guess I would’ve stuck with the Army.”

That sounded preferable to going home, or going to college under the GI bill or whatever. He was fine traipsing through a hot, wet, insect ridden green, killing some assholes who were trying his damnedest to kill the big dumb assholes shipped from half a world away. Or to stick with this unit. The action was good, up until he lost an arm. 

Judging from the general’s expression, that answer spoke nothing but good things. He nodded appreciatively. “Careerist. I like that. I was… somewhat in your shoes when I was a kid, back in the Pacific. If you want, we can arrange for you to be transferred back to your old outfit.”

They both knew that wasn’t going to fly. Peter Randall was not going to serve the rest of the tour in Vietnam. And despite the fact that he otherwise would’ve wanted to stay in the army… after Hope he realized there were more important enemies to be fighting than some barefoot farmers hiding in tunnels and trees.

That was proved when the general said “Of course, you could stay with this unit.”

Randall raised his right arm. Or what was left of it. “Don’t think I’d have much to contribute, Sir.”

“I think you should know by now, we can bend the rules to get things done.” The general said. Seeing a look of disbelief on Randall’s face he tilted his head. One of the doctors handed a bundle of clothes to Randall. “Come, lets go for a walk.”

Five minutes later, Peter Randall was following on the heels of the general. His BDU shirt was unbuttoned, right sleeve dangling empty, and his boots were untied, but it felt great to be back in uniform after that eternity—three weeks, the general had said—in a hospital gown. Every step was overwhelming after the long stay in that one room; Randall tried to follow the General’s anecdote about something he had seen on Attu during 1942—there was a reason nobody talked much about Alaska during the war. But there were so many distractions.

“But enough about ancient history.” The general said. “There’s going to be time enough for that later one. The important questions are all about Hope. I’m going to preface this by saying that, I have on good authority that the President is going to be announcing the end of America’s biological weapons program by the end of this year.”

The way the General spoke, it was like he took affront to the idea of Richard Milhouse Nixon coming to a decision he disapproved of. An official end to America’s biowarfare efforts, like that actually mattered. Blackwatch never existed in the first place. Officially.

“The unit will still function, but there’s going to be a period of adjustment—we’re going to have to play ball for the foreseeable future. Hope may be the last chance we have to glean this sort of information. We’ve gotten the story from the survivors of the field teams, including your platoon, but I’d like to hear it from you. Have you thought about Hope?”

* * *

_The deuce and a half bounced on the rutted dirt road. They checked over their weapons insistently—at least he did. Had enough problems with jamming half a world away that he was very particular about his rifle. As the truck continued to rumble, he looked at the rest of the unfamiliar faces. They stared back, warily. One of them asked, “Sir?”_

_They’d all seen shit back in the jungle. They hadn’t talked much—he hadn’t asked many questions about the group. He was leading the platoon, so his absolute ignorance was something he felt he needed to hide. He could tell they didn’t particularly respect him; poached from all manner of units stationed in Vietnam, they weren’t keen on trusting anyone they hadn’t been in the shit with. The things Lieutenant Randall saw and did were not the same as the things Private Lawson did, or what Corporal Kennedy did._

_Even if everything they did was broadly similar. Maybe you had a CIA spook attached to your unit, and you helped him ask the important questions. Maybe you crossed a border you shouldn’t have. Maybe you did your cleared some villages of hostiles. Maybe all of the above. All of it was doing what Uncle Sam asked, when he asked it. They hadn’t been together when they did the things they did, so it didn’t matter._

_Some saw the unit as a way out of the Bush. A ticket stateside doing grunt work for a medical division? Sign them up. Maybe others, like him, had an idea that what they were doing was something completely unexpected. They’d been running through training exercises quite a bit. Marksmanship, room-clearing, donning gas masks. A lot of work considering they were stateside for a research division. _

_They still weren’t cohering. Some of his men opened up to others, shared stories, smokes, whatever. But there was still an unfamiliarity permeating the situation when they were brought in for a briefing. The first time any of them heard of_ _Hope. Slides were shown. T__he **children** were shown._

_He’d seen dead kids before. But **this** was new. One of the children born to one of those happy postcard couples, unravelling. An autopsy table of a chubby, newborn, thorns bursting from gray-pink skin. Things less pleasant than that. Hope was a medical experiment, one that the Army had decided had gone on too long. And the first people on site to investigate shutting it down had not been heard from. If anyone in the room had objections to continuing to participate, they could leave right then and their. A few did, and Randall was fairly certain he'd never be seeing or hearing from them again._

_Because they knew the Press was turning on them. And Hope was a U.S. town, not one half a world away. So, clearing it had to be kept quiet._

* * *

Randall nodded. “Sir. I've... had some time to think.”

“And tell me, what do you think we could’ve done differently to have secured a better outcome?”

Randall blinked. That was well beyond his remit. After a moment’s hesitation, he began talking, slowly, forming his idea as he articulated it. The briefing hadn't quite covered what they were supposed to expect. “The men on the ground didn’t know exactly what we were dealing with, sir.”

“Unfortunately, the boys in the lab had no idea what exactly was happening with the project, either.” The General said. “Did you know we’d been sitting on the town since ’64? And there was… nothing… remarkable until recently.”

“That wasn’t in the briefing.” Randall said. A lot of things weren’t. He hadn’t questioned it at the time—they were trigger pullers. The finer points of whatever science was going on _did not matter_ for their job. At least, he thought that then.

“Y’see, there were a lot of unknowns in Hope.” The general continued. “We didn’t know _what _we were sending you and your men into until you were in it. This was… a wake-up call. We know what to expect if it happens again.”

“You’ll need a lot more manpower.” Randall said. Had they a few more Platoons, maybe M113s instead of a couple jeeps and trucks, what had been a tough battle would have been much easier. He bounced most of his thoughts off of the General, who either sincerely appreciated the input, or more likely was very good at faking sincere interest. Randall did not mention an Arc Light package to soften the town up before they went in was probably out of the question though—there’d be nothing to salvage. 

_Because apparently dragging her and her son out of Hope was a good thing._

They reached the end of the decrepit hall, facing two other soldiers, standing at attention. Between them was a heavy, _heavy_ metal door. Unlike everything else in this decrepit base, this was a recent instillation, the metal freshly oiled and a pristine white DANGER underneath. The general slid open a thin slot at eye level and stepped aside, gesturing for Randall to take a look.

The room was barren concrete. No fixtures, no light except what came in from the slot in the door. Randall shifted to the side letting in enough for a thin rectangle to illuminate this place’s other patient. She was in a hospital gown, not unlike Randall had been. Bruised, she sat on the floor of the Cell, staring vacantly at them.

“Lizzy’s been well behaved ever since your arm.” The general said. “Gave us no trouble at all. She’s just sat there.”

Randall’s right arm itched in a place it didn’t exist anymore, and he scratched at the stump as best he could as he scowled, bit his lips. She, or whatever was in her blood was responsible for the town going to shit, turning that dormant experiment into what he’d walked through. 

“What’re you thinking, son?”

“We should just get rid of her. Her and the boy. Kill them both.” It was not the right thing to say, but it was the first thing to cross his mind. His heart rate was spiking, he could feel the blood coursing through this throat and temples. “You should have these two just drag it outside and burn it.”

The general sighed, and Randall had a feeling he had just made a fatal mistake. “Son, I can understand the sentiment. But we cannot do that. She is an asset. You recovering her… and do me a favor and _never _bring up the other asset in front of people not cleared for it… made those five wasted years and every lost life at Hope worth it.”

“How?” He’d pulled her out of Hope, and lost an arm for his trouble. It made no real sense to keep either of them around. It was so much safer to not have something like her alive. “What do we get…”

The general interrupted by grabbing Randall’s shoulder and leading him away, down the hallway, turn at a junction, through some double doors, and out into a bright, sunny expanse of nothingness. Randall narrowed his eyes at the flat stretch of dirt, occasionally broken by scrubby vegetation. A C-130 cargo plane dwarfed everything in his eyeline, sitting on a run-down strip of asphalt barely worth calling a runway. A crew was running about, tiny in comparison to the transport.

“Son, I know that there’s _a lot_ you haven’t been told. And I know the past few weeks have been _rough_.” The General said, looking at Randall intensely. The lieutenant matched his stare. “A lot of need-to-know things that you didn’t need to know. I can tell you this. In two hours, we are going to put her on that plane. She’ll be headed to Maryland.”

“Fort Detrick?” Randall asked. The cornerstone of America’s bioweapon’s program. 

The General nodded. “Hope has prompted… changes. We need to be more effective at fighting this bug. And to do that, we need to study it, not just get rid of it and pray it doesn’t happen again.”

Randall looked at the ground crews. “She’s dangerous.”

“Everything’s dangerous. Nukes are, and we have a no shortage of those.” To make sure that the Russians never got the bright idea to use _their_ nukes. Did they have something like _her_? “To defend against something, you need to know what it is. So we need her.”

“What about the boy?”

“Above your paygrade, lieutenant.” The general said, growing more irritated that Randall couldn't get not talking about it through his thick skull, apparently. “But… unofficially…everything we got out of Hope is invaluable. Including the survivors of your platoon.”

He’d pulled her out of Hope, and lost an arm for his trouble. He was a trigger-puller missing his trigger finger, and she was… she couldn’t be allowed to live. It made no real sense to keep either of them around. The General said, slowly. “She’s going to Maryland. And I’d like you to be on the plane, too. I _do _think you have quite the future with the unit, if you so choose”

“Sir?” Randall asked. “I’m an infantryman who lost an arm. What…”

“You led the team on the ground—managed to use limited resources to accomplish our priorities. And you didn’t just misplace your arm, you _cut it off_.” The general interrupted. “Lot of your team, they think they had hard choices to make. Gunning down people who were as good as dead already, watching the town burn. Hope was a big sacrifice to them. Anyone can make a hard choice or a sacrifice if _it’s someone else footing the bill_. You? I have a feeling you’d be willing to literally sacrifice it all to get the job done, your own life-and-limb included.”

Randall was silent.

“I think there may be great things in store for you, Lieutenant. Not on the front lines, but in a more important role, perhaps.” The General said. “Two hours. Stay here, take a discharge, agree to never speak of this again—maybe you lost your arm to friendly fire, or some VC trick along the Tra Bong, and that’s that. Or get on the plane, and _make a difference_. Think about it.”

There wasn’t any thinking to do. He didn't quite think that this outfit really was that easy to leave as the General said--clearing a town, on foot, then watching it burn had told him enough about that. Maybe appreciation for services rendered would keep him safe, maybe not. Probably not, especially given his outburst. And, it wasn't like he had much to look forward to even if he was just let go--he couldn't exactly go back home and get a job at the plant. Hell, he chose to go halfway around the world and get shot at to get away from there. Either they killed him, or he was going home. Not much of a future either way.

But this outfit. He'd never be able to go on the frontlines again, but he would still be involved. He did see plenty up close, probably knew what the virus did better than the idiots who started the experiment. If someone else got their hands on it, the unit would need to know how to fight it. And the woman and her child. If he stuck around long enough, maybe he'd find out what was so important. Or maybe he'd get his wish and burn them both.

Randall was going to get on that plane.

**Author's Note:**

> Hm. Part of what I like about exchanges is sometimes prompts give me ideas that I'd never get without them. Randall's interesting to me because he's clearly looking for his own advancement from what little we got of the Hope WOI, and he's been with Blackwatch for four decades since, but doesn't get a _ton_ of development ingame (not that anyone really does). There's a ton of room to play around with his character, so I wanted to give it a shot.


End file.
